


The Ring

by GrytpypeThynne



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:51:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrytpypeThynne/pseuds/GrytpypeThynne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was always the question of that ring and, seeing as Mycroft isn't exactly open, Anthea's the first line of defence from prying persons. There are many tactics applied to get her to break but only one will succeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ring

The two key words for a secretary in her position were intelligent and discreet. Mr. Holmes had use for the first far more often than the second, but that didn’t mean it was any less essential, especially when certain people were asking the questions.

Deflection worked on most people but not on Sherlock:

“Why is my brother wearing a wedding ring on the wrong finger?” She smirked. Sherlock was never anything approaching polite. “Agnes.”

“Anthea.” She hadn’t looked up from her phone; she wouldn’t look up from her phone. His mind was second only to his brother’s, but he wasted no space on her name. He didn’t warrant a look.

“Anthea.” He waved the correction away, as he always did. “My brother wears a wedding ring on the wrong finger. Why.” She raised an eyebrow.

“You’re the detective, you tell me.” She flicked through several blocks of mail, idly correcting grammar and spelling, deliberately adding ‘u’s and swapping ‘z’s for ‘s’es in American correspondence. Sherlock was making deductions aloud, presumably to awe her but, as she and he both knew as all his observations came to naught, she wasn’t impressed. Also, she thought, adding a missing zero to a budget report, it was hard to be impressed when she’d seem him naked and drugged to his eyeballs in a gutter. “So, you don’t know.”

Sherlock made a non-committal noise that she was glad her phone automatically recorded and repeated his question. The car rolled to a halt. Anthea allowed herself an enigmatic smile. “Your brother asked me to tell you that it’s none of your business and not to pester me about it but I like you more when you’re not telling me how stupid I am, so feel free to sit here searching for a reason yourself.” She had a version of Flight Control on her phone that allowed her to set trade routes for MI6 supplies; she considered writing SH sucks in cursive across the globe in the route of one agent but settled for playing tic-tac-toe. Sherlock left after a second or two and the car rolled away, leaving Sherlock standing wet and unilluminated in the street.

There were people for whom deflection worked, of course, but using it was no fun; the ‘good doctor’ was one such individual:

He was working up to something, she could tell. Thankfully London traffic was appalling this morning, thanks to a minor troop deployment to Bahrain. John opened his mouth again and Anthea added another mark next to a tally she was running on her phone (behind the one that was giving polling numbers from the Indian elections.) He coughed, glanced at her, then stared out the window and sighed.

“Anthea…?” Finally. She looked up at him; John was cute, he always got a look. He’d asked her out the first time they met, sometimes he even got a smile. She smiled. “I was wondering, about Mycroft—” The ring. “—and the ring he wears on his right-hand ring finger.”

“Were you wondering, or was that Sherlock wondering through you?” Anthea liked smiling at John, but if she got too free with her smiles, she would soon be smiling at Sherlock, Mycroft, at the people who worked for Mycroft but signed their names with a single letter, and at those he worked for that signed things ER.

“Both, really.” Ah, how delightful it was to be with honest people.

“And what makes you think I can tell you?” The key was the little tremor on the first two words; it was like a giggle, a laugh which told John that he and Sherlock had supposed wrong.

“You’re Mycroft’s right hand man.” Ah. Flattery. She smiled –damn, not again.

“What makes you think he’d discuss it with me?”

“Discuss what?” Ah. Damn. If John were Sherlock, he’d know how personal it was.

“Anything that isn’t my job.”

“And this isn’t… your job?” If she lived with him, she’d find his pauses annoying.

Smile, half a laugh: “No.” John exhaled in his loud and breathy way; no doubt she’d find that annoying too. Maybe she was far too used to Mycroft; he woke early, more often at five than six, and ate what breakfast she’d cooked for him before leaving for work. The menials pressed his clothes, washed the dishes and cleaned the house or apartment. She packed his lunch, made dinner if he ate at home, prepared his briefs and laid out his clothes for the morning. Then she rode around in a car coordinating the micro-management to Mycroft’s macro-management. Most of this was done in silence. Most of what Mycroft did was silent, or at least so quiet they were drowned in the noise everyone else made about doing something. John was saying things again.

“What?”

“What is your job again?”

She smiled, insincerely this time. “Goodbye John.” He left, awkwardly as usual, and only once the car had pulled away did he notice he’d been dropped in Muswell Hill. She did giggle then, but only once she’d queried a law enforcement request for new riot shields.

There were others, for whom neither deflection nor flirtation worked:

“A,” Gregory Lestrade could stop Anthea in a room full of people drunker and more information rich than she’d seen in a while. It had something to do with boss’s date’s prerogative. He also got a smile. “Would you give me a dance?” Her dress was close fitting enough, but there were still places to put a phone if one was inventive - no, if one had half a brain. The dance was a slow one; he could put his arms around her waist and whisper in her ear. “A, about the ring…”

“Ugh.” Not this again, please. “Greg…”

“A, don’t dodge this again.”

“’G’, I won’t be able to look my boss in the face again if I don’t.” She whispered her reply in his ear, but her eyes were on Mycroft’s face across the room. “This kind of thing is none of my business. If you’re so curious, ask him.”

“I’m asking you.” Anthea cursed, quietly, whatever fates had given her fatal attraction to two men that were seeing each other.

“And I’m telling you, Gregory, that I can’t answer. There are stories only Mycroft can tell.”

“He won’t.”

“That’s not my fault.” She pulled away; the song was ending. “Greg, I can’t break the three or four official secrets acts that prevent me from talking about this. It’s Mycroft’s business and I don’t discuss it with Russia, with Sherlock, with Her Majesty, with Mycroft himself. I certainly don’t discuss it with you. I need to go find some Chinese agents to get drunk and sleep with for information, so…” She adjusted his tie, flattened his collar and strolled away.

On some people, only honesty would serve:

“Tea, dear?”

“Thanks, Mrs. Hudson.” Anthea took her tea black, without sugar and she dearly loved the biscuits Mrs. Hudson supplied with tea. “How have the boys been?” Sometimes, Mrs Hudson would tell her things; sometimes not, but she had a higher success rate than Mycroft and that was what mattered.  
“Oh they’re fine, dear - how are yours?” Anthea sipped her tea and let the corners of her mouth twitched upwards in something nearing a smile.

“There’s a little trouble in paradise, shall we say.”

“Are they struggling to find time for each other?” More than a few images from the past few nights flashed across Anthea’s mind.

“No, the problem’s in an entirely different direction.” Anthea replaced her cup on the saucer and remote deactivated the bugs on 221A’s kitchen. “Mrs Hudson, did you ever notice the ring Mycroft wears on his right hand?”

“The wedding ring?”

“On the wrong hand.” Anthea nodded and, in spite of herself, leant into to Mrs Hudson. “The engagement hand.”

“Are you trying to tell me something, dearie?”

“Only that there’s a long story that is restricted information in America, Russia, here and bizarrely, Gabon. I told Detective Inspector Lestrade that I’ve three or four official secrets acts preventing me from telling it - I’m not sure what the rules are in Gabon.” Anthea wondered if there was something in her tea, she hadn’t really planned on sharing that.

“Do you want to tell me a different story?” Anthea smiled.

“My pleasure.” Anthea took a deep breath and began: “The sort of jobs my boss and I hold don’t come with a family option. There was a person, much admired by my superior, who was lost in the course of duty before he got a chance to live. Particularly to marry, to have children: considered as a whole, before he could live. He was the first clue either of us got that we’d be married to jobs and not to people. If we’re engaged only, to our jobs, we have a chance to walk out, to leave our jobs at the altar and elope with someone else. That’s why it's the wrong hand.” She stood, slowly and collected her coat. “Get the boys to lay off the two of us,” she said, letting her right hand rest on the back of the chair for a moment, just long enough for Mrs. Hudson to see the gold gleam there. “It’s harder every time this is dragged up.”


End file.
